Even that most unpredictable of fantasists Nikolay Gogol might have been surprised to find his Nose, wandering far from the face of Collegiate Assessor Kovalyov, sung by a high tenor in an unlikely operatic adaptation of his wackiest story. Give the singing role, as Barrie Kosky does, to another character, and show the giant-sized Nose – here a boy dancer – without any token apparel of his supposed high rank before which lowly official Kovalov absurdly grovels, and you miss the point of a vintage scene in Shostakovich's The Nose.

Prospects hadn't seemed that great for this new Covent Garden Così. Could Semyon Bychkov, powerful earth-and-fire conductor of Richard Strauss's darker operas, possibly find the right proportions of air and water in Mozart? Would German director Jan Philipp Gloger prove better than his Bayreuth reputation? As it happened, the sextet of half-unknown principals never sang less than respectably, and the production had some good ideas, though mostly linked to the look of expensive sets rather than to focused work on the psychology of confused lovers.

What do women want? Ballet plots are not the best guide, since the main desiderata – a well-paying job, coffee dates with girlfriends, not to die young of a broken heart – are rarely the lot of ballet heroines. Comedies at least tend to have the not-dying part covered, but they often fall down on at least one of two other big requirements: that one's family should be supportive, and that one's romantic partner should not be a chump.

"If you know anything about dance," I was told last night by an aged balletomane at the Royal Opera House, "you know that Russian ballet companies are the best." If this is true then the Bolshoi Ballet, biggest of the Russian companies, in Swan Lake, that most quintessential of ballets, must be awe-inspiring.

Anyone remember the Boobahs? They were the less successful cousins of the Teletubbies, from the same production house. They were puffy, fat, primary-coloured humanoids who bounced endlessly around in bizarre choreographed dance routines. They were psychedelic infantilism incarnate, and very funny.

That often-repeated truism about Verdi's craziest melodrama, that it needs four of the world's greatest voices, makes no mention of acting ability. Given the top-notch international approach to this kind of opera, impressively fielded by what's called "Cast A" here, German director David Bösch was right to build a dark, consistent visual world around mostly stand-and-deliver performances rather than demand too much of his stars. Conductor Gianandrea Noseda's febrile, focused musicality helps Bösch and his team deliver the essence of this tricky masterpiece.

All 23 of Massenet's mature operas boast memorably melodious quarters of an hour and fastidious orchestration, so why Werther’s special status as a repertoire staple? Three or four great arias may have been enough to clinch it. There’s also the fact that the source, Goethe's The Sorrows of Young Werther, confers a highbrow status the opera, a pale shadow of the original, doesn't really deserve. At any rate it came over last night as no more than an after-dinner mint to a dark day's dining on scorpions.

Take Rossini, Bellini and Donizetti, and add Handel and Mozart and the Frenchman Massenet, and you have the composers whose operas the Kansas-born mezzo-soprano Joyce DiDonato has made her own. She's one of the few who has become a classic opera diva while remaining true to her roots (she was born in Prairie Village, Kansas, and one of her all-time favourite songs is "Over the Rainbow": remember Dorothy was a Kansas girl too.)

It shows you just how much Kenneth MacMillan changed ballet in this country that 1960's The Invitation, with its onstage rape, sexual grooming and child abuse, can act as the reassuring classic at the heart of the new Royal Ballet triple bill which opened on Saturday.

"Unjustly neglected masterpiece" is a cliché of musical criticism, and usually an exaggeration. Romanian master Enescu's vast journey through aspects of the Oedipus myth seemed like an unacknowledged great among 20th century operas through the medium of the starrily-cast EMI recording with José van Dam as the noblest Greek of all; after Martinu's Julietta and Szymanowski's King Roger, here was the last titan to be properly served by a top UK production.